Superlative Beauty - I had a request for a vintage-looking gauge set. The customer was interested in a few different designs, but we zeroed in on the Model 36 gauges after a bit of discussion. Nearly everything about them was changed, at least in a small way. The results speak for themselves.

Jazz - A first - a set of Stirling gauges with a different zero rotation. The customer wanted them rotated to 6 o'clock for his car, Jazz. A very simple request, but it totally changed the feel of these gauges.

Code Red - Changing the background color on the gauges with dark grey artwork (Stirling and Barcode) is not easy. It usually comes out looking quite strange. But what about just deleting the grey bars?

Catfish - Ever heard of the Catfish? They take MX-5 guts and drivetrain and put it in a small body. I'd not heard of one before receiving this order. I was smitten. I might need one. These are done in the same Dark Sea Foam as a few other gauges I've made.

Legendary - My buddy (Legendary on the forums) ordered this set. At first glance they seem to be just a GT-40 set with a 6 o'clock rotation. Upon closer inspection you can see how many changes there really are.

Blackout - What you're looking at is the result of a year of collaboration. The original request was for some Transformers-inspired gauges based on the OEM+ design. I, as many of you may know, am a Transformer nut. I've been a huge fan since I first saw Optimus Prime in 1984. It was a lot of work, but this was maybe the most fun order I've ever had.

Project 707 Flyin' Miata fans will recognize the name "Project 707." It's the car that Keith built for his buddy Eric with lots of Porsche inspired details. It's a great project. I was a faithful reader when it was being built. Like all good projects, it was never really finished.

I was super excited when Keith contacted me and asked to me to make some gauges for the car. He sent several dozen Porsche gauges to be used as inspiration and had some favorites picked out. That gave me a great starting point from which to design.

This is my version of the original VDO gauges on the 911. I think it's a pretty faithful recreation.

Night Mode:

Night mode is very simple. The original VDO gauges used reflective lighting (where the light goes around the edge of the metal dial to illuminate the front) and the Miata uses through-the-dial lighting. I think if they had the technology, the original 911 gauges would have lit up like this.

Spyder LE - A set of Spyder gauges ordered with a red interior instead of white. That was really the only change. I then did a lot of work getting everything else just perfect to match the red insides.

Really proud of the redline with the thin black outline. I'm really proud of the whole design. I've been trying to come up with something suited to the 93LE interior for years. This is as close as I've ever come. I think this will evolve into a full set of gauges.

There's exactly two cartoons I watch over and over on Netflix - Transformers (Beast Wars) and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I know folks will judge after reading that, but I love both. And getting to do gauges based on both of those shows? Like a beautiful dream.

The order was for some MLP-centric gauges with the Prototipo rotation. I asked about putting cutie marks in each gauge's background and the owner agreed. The tach has Rainbow Dash and a rainbow redline.

Every car needs a party gauge. Especially a Pinkie Pie party gauge.

Rarity on oil duty.

And Fluttershy on the water. For water and oil, I chose to not try coming up with cute indicator text. It seemed like less was more and it would let the Party/fuel gauge really stand out to have it be the only one altered that way.

Twilight rounds out the Mane 5. Especially fitting to have her on the speedometer since she grew wings recently.

The lighting on the pony gauges uses outlines on the cutie marks. If they lit up fully, they would be overpowering. Leaving them blanked out would be... well, boring. But outlines? Perfect

I used white LEDs on these. They seemed the perfect choice to keep the colors crisp and true.

Starship - An order came in for a set of gauges inspired by the late Dewa-san's star gauges. Into the Blue, Bluestar and Stardust have always been an inspiration to me. Getting to do my own take on those masterpieces was pretty wonderful. I started with my 10AE gauge set and worked from there. These were going in a Mazdaspeed NB and the customer requested some red to match the highlights in his interior, so the blue outer gradient became red.

I immediately knew I wanted to put a rocket on it. A vintage cartoon rocket. I quickly drew it up and started on the star trail. I'd never designed an element that would flow across multiple gauges, so I had to measure the cluster layout and redo my NB template.

The background stars not in the trail are actually from a sky map. I started with randomly placed stars but they seemed off. When I put an actual sky backdrop and repositioned things to match, it was like the whole set came into focus.

I hope the late Dewa-san would approve of my tribute to his beautiful work.

And here are the stars at night, lit by LED bulbs from superbright. The lighting is very even across the whole face. I'm rather proud of it.

Rising Sun - This is the most technical order I've ever received - a Rising Sun flag with the rays stretching across all five gauges. Lighting was to be outlined and complex on each gauge. White background, red flag, of course. And for the gauge design, the Version Zero style with the zero point at 1:00.

The rays stretch across every gauge. Everything lines up perfectly. Difficulty factor: 10.

A word on the Rising Sun: I realize that some folks are offended by the flag and I'm sorry about that. This is how the gauges were ordered and I was happy to fill the order. I've always been a fan of the flag design and really enjoyed getting to work on it. Did you know that the flag is still used today as Japan's naval ensign? Anyways, sorry if anyone finds this set of gauges distasteful.

For the text color, I chose mirrored masking everywhere. If the background was white, the lettering and scale was red. For the red background areas, the lettering was white. Not easy, but very cool looking.

And here it is at night. Very dramatic. Light leaks in the cluster and needles just add to the overall feeling I chose not to try toning the light leaks down, but rather using them as part of the look. The outlined flag really shows how well everything links up.

Wood Texture - I've never had anyone order something with a wood grain before. There's always a first time for everything, right? This was an order for the 1001 gauges with a wood tach. The customer even sent me his woodgrain interior pieces (shift knob and brake handle) to help me match the color better.

That is some very good work, Adam. After seeing how the gauge faces are made, I understand the insane amount of work that has gone into the rising sun. And the result is brilliant. I think that might be my favorite set so far!

Lobo - This is actually a set of Prototipo gauges. These were ordered with a wolf theme and a specific wolf logo. I worked on them for a couple hours and couldn't get anything that looked at all cool. Then I got creative.

I hand-drew this wolf on a hill. I brought in one of my old moon photos and drew over top. A bit of gold and light green got the moon looking pretty. Then the stars went in.

I extended the hills across the other gauges to create a night scene. The stars are overlaid on a real sky map. This is a different section of the sky than the Starship gauges I did earlier.

Last, I added a gradient glow behind the moon and shaded the wolf and hill accordingly. I'm really proud of the result.

At night, the moon becomes a crescent and is dimmed by 50%. The hills fade away. Only the numbers and stars remain.

This was an order for some "Fox" gauges with some ghosted lighting. My reply back to the original order was something like "so, like a cute fox playing?" Then the cartooning started.

I drew the fox jumping on the tach and put him against a snowy background. I dropped a few dozen snow flakes over top and then started work on making the other four gauges snow.

The customer wanted some tree elements. I drew this big one to give the sleeping fox a bit of cover for his nap. A bit of distant mountains helped round out the gauges.

This is the most elaborate night mode I've ever done.

Since these gauges were white, I had the chance to actually ADD an element at night. That doesn't work with black gauges since the black is opaque. But with white, I thought I might try to add a moon rising over the mountain and lighting up the fox scene.

There is actual crater detail on the moon (the moon is borrowed from Corifto's Lobo gauges). The lighting around the scale and numbers looks a bit uneven, but that's because of the sky gradient on the face getting darker toward the top.

There are no words to describe my happiness about all of this.

The sleeping fox looks quite peaceful under his tree. The branches are dimly illuminated by the rising moon.

and last but not least...

Here's an animated gif day-to-night transition. Give it a moment to load.

This was my most technically challenging gauge set to date. I had to print it seven times to get it right. I don't think I actually broke even on this order. But the result is glorious. I don't know if I'll equal the Little Fox gauges any time soon.

Sunrise : A friend and long time customer named Star ordered these. It was just about the most open ended order of all time, yet with the most constraints. She had a piece of art that she wanted translated into a gauge set. Or rather, just the feel of that art. Something similar with similar colors, but not a copy.

The artwork showed a sunrise scene over a lake with a group of cranes standing serenely. It had a lot of golds and browns in it. Very lovely. Very relaxing to look at.

I've been a photographer for a long while and visit the Bosque Del Apache nature reserve yearly. They have cranes there. The best time to visit is at sunrise. So... by coincidence, I had many photos of a similar real-life scene that Star's artwork depicted. I started work transferring one of those photos to a gauge set.

When these rolled out of the plotter and I got a look at them, my heart beat faster. That's never happened. The colors were PERFECT. I was suddenly standing on that frozen dock next to my dad taking photos of birds. The photos, while lovely, never generated that sort of response. But seeing the same scene with a gauge scale over it? Surreal.

The only non-real part of this scene is the haze in front of the mountain. That misty brown fog was a special request, and one I was happy to supply. It turned out beautifully and is not something you'd suspect wasn't real.

This is the most personal set of gauges I've ever made. It was a lot of work, but it was also a complete pleasure. Thanks for letting me bring these into the world, Star.

At night, the sunrise becomes a sunset. I've never achieved perfection when lighting up such a large area and... I still haven't. But the result is quite good. The few dark areas are easy to overlook. And the red sunset tones... I achieved exactly what I was aiming for.

Here's an animated day to night transition. You can see the clouds appear in the sky as the sun sets. The lighting is using the stock incandescent bulbs in these photos. While LEDs give more vibrant colors, the stock bulbs are much better suited for a moody sunset in my opinion.

Knuckles - After doing so many cartoon gauges, making this set was a welcome change. Royce sent in an order for a set of "Knuckles" gauges, due to his car's name. The order was then changed to something a bit more traditional. I'm calling this set "Knuckles" due to the brand on the tach.

I was provided with a tach photo that Royce thought was awesome. He wanted me to expand it into a full gauge set. I'd not done that since making the Revolver gauges and was eager to flex my design muscles. The dual scale with the yellow lower text is just... sublime. Such a pretty design. It was a joy to build the whole set up.

I added red zones to all small gauges. The design is squished a bit also to allow it to fit a KGW cluster.

ZX12R - This was a fun custom order. John, a long time customer and owner of a few sets on this page (yes, a FEW) ordered a set for a Miata he was building for his dad. This set is inspired by his dad's favorite motorcycle, the Kawasaki ZX12R.

If you've never seen a ZX12R, don't worry - the gauges look exactly like this. Slightly different limits, but everything else is the same.

While perusing the photos John sent, I saw the blue inner scale on the speedometer and just fell in love. It's just lovely. I couldn't wait to make these.

The three small gauges were a bit of a challenge. The ZX12R doesn't have them. But it does have abbreviated fuel and temp gauges as an electronic readout. I took that style and made it into a analog faces.

Night mode is incredibly crisp and satisfying. The LEDs really give it a lot of vibrance.

Looking over all the amazing gauges you have posted here, I can only think of the passion, creativity and skill that went into the making of these. I do have a set of AWD gauges as well, but they are really flimsy and not near being the same quality as yours.

I`ll be back for a custom set once I figure out how I can match the interior even better than the red Warbirds. Its proving to be a not so easy task.

ZELDA - Zelda was definitely in my top 3 games as a kid (up there with Gradius and Metroid). But an order for some Twilight Princess / Majora's Mask gauges? They made me a little uncertain. I've never played any of the non-NES, non-Gameboy Zelda games (because I'm old) and wasn't sure how these would turn out. But a buttload of research and helpful directing from Mal, the owner of these gauges, helped me turn out something I'm hugely proud of.

Mal particularly liked the dark theme on the two Zelda games. They have a lot of purples and teals. That got me pointed in the right direction for these gauges.

A lot of the artwork I found for Twilight Princess showed a moon, clouds, and stars above Link. Very moody. I grabbed a moon and drew up some quick clouds. Things started to come together.

I mean, you GOTTA have hearts on the fuel gauge...

A small triforce and a connecting cloud brings some flavor to the oil gauge.

The mask is eerie. I had a good time drawing it up. It has a fair bit of detail that becomes more apparent at night.

Kinda obvious, like the hearts. But a perfect fit for the water gauge.

Trying to capture the moody nature of the gauges without so much direct light on them. They have quite a feel to them.

Night mode.

The moon actually works as a high beam indicator. With the high beam silo trimmed a bit, it lights up both with the gauge lighting and the high beam light.